STYLE : INTERIORS : Just for Kitsch

Snow White, saints and lobster ashtrays all under the same roof? Call it whimsy style. The West Hollywood apartment of Richard Rouilard, former editor in chief of The Advocate, reflects the building’s glamorous past, when Mae (and later, Bette) lived there and Gable and Cooper hung out at the pool. But its appeal comes from the lighthearted approach of Ron Meyers, designer of witty Club Lux, Atlas Bar & Grill and Tryst.

Meyers began with a tongue-in-cheek design philosophy--”Every serious room should have a lobster ashtray.” Interiors were executed in “dream of tomato, granny apple and roasted eggplant.” Furnishings are a playful juxtaposition of expensive and cheap, real and fake. In the dining room, for example, a $100 oak table sits under an 18th-Century English chandelier, and a $35 oval mirror, painted to look like gold, hangs near an authentic gilt Regency mirror.

Serious craftsmanship abounds. The dining chair slipcovers, with their flared skirts, are expertly tailored. Thirty-odd cushions feature crocheted antimacassar pads and a voodoo flag from Haiti. And one pillow is trimmed with ball fringe that was sewn on one ball at a time. Says Meyers: “It drove my seamstress crazy.”